Engaging the Middle East: The View from Washington
DEVELOPMENTS
The Obama presidency begins at a time of great challenge and great opportunity in the Middle East. Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, U.S. relations with Syria have deteriorated, the Lebanese government is weak and fractured, and the conflict between Israel and Hamas threatens to exacerbate regional instability. However, the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan have become U.S. allies, the Persian Gulf states have deepened their ties with the U.S., and have committed to fighting terrorism and developing, democratic institutions—all of which makes possible a major strategic realignment in the region that would favor U.S. interests.
Although President Obama campaigned on general denunciations of President Bush’s foreign policy record, he will need to overcome the temptation to overlook the opportunities the outgoing President forged. A successful regional approach requires not only a realistic threat assessment, but also an understanding of the U.S.’s considerable regional gains in the last eight years, and President Obama will have to devote as much attention to securing these gains as he will to confronting lingering threats.
BACKGROUND
George W. Bush inherited a dangerous and volatile Middle East when he became president in 2001. At President Bush’s first inauguration, collapsed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks had helped spark a second Intifada; Afghanistan was a terrorist sanctuary; Iraq was under the leadership of a violent, anti-American dictator; Iran had begun developing nuclear weapons; Libya was a state-sponsor of terrorism; Saudi Arabia was funding radical madrassas throughout the Middle East and using hate-mongering textbooks in its own schools; Syria occupied Lebanon; and Pakistani-U.S. relations were at best unclear, because of President Pervez Musharraf’s support of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Despite unresolved challenges with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, and India-Pakistan, President Bush made substantial progress in a number of areas. His decision to remove from power the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq turned two of the greatest threats to the U.S. into allies in the War on Terror, and likely helped convince Libya to renounce terrorism and abandon its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in 2003. President Bush also exerted pressure on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, pressed allies in the Persian Gulf and the Maghreb to develop democratic institutions and greater civil liberties, and deepened America’s ties with numerous countries in the region by signing free trade agreements.
ANALYSIS
President Obama will have to devote attention to many pressing issues in the Middle East, such as stabilizing Lebanon, encouraging continued progress towards democracy in Morocco, Jordan, and several other Gulf countries, and managing unexpected crises that are certain to divert the new president and his Middle East team entirely. However, President Obama would do well to focus his limited time and resources to the following five priorities—in descending order of importance:
- Secure U.S. gains in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has invested a great deal of blood and treasure in these two countries, and failure risks a loss of U.S. prestige as well as other long-lasting consequences. Allies would no longer trust the U.S., enemies would no longer fear the U.S., and terrorist groups would establish safe-havens and spread chaos in both countries. Meanwhile, success would tip the region’s strategic balance in America’s favor, set a powerful example for other countries in the Middle East, and deal a deathblow to al Qaeda, which would lose credibility and be unable to attract new recruits.
- Counter Iran from a position of strength. President Obama will have to persuade Iran that it should abandon its nuclear aims and become a more constructive member of the international community. Thankfully, Iran’s bellicose rhetoric and pursuit of nuclear weapons is doing for the rest of the Middle East what the Soviet Union did for Europe: fostering greater cooperation among other countries in the region, and driving everybody deeper into the American camp. If President Obama secures our gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the price of oil remains low, then the U.S. can approach Iran with unprecedented leverage.
- Cooperate with Pakistan to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Certain elements of the Pakistani government, military, and security services remain uncommitted to a successful Afghanistan. These elements favor “strategic depth,” i.e., an unstable or Taliban-led Afghanistan into which Pakistani forces can retreat in the event of a conflict between Pakistan and India. President Obama will have to work with President Zardari to sideline those elements and take decisive action against the FATA-based Taliban and al Qaeda units. A failure to do so could unravel our efforts in Afghanistan, destabilize Pakistan, and allow al Qaeda cells to again threaten the U.S. and its allies.
- Develop creative approaches to deradicalize the region and bolster moderates. Saudi Arabia’s schools continue to use textbooks that denigrate other religions, support for Hamas and Hezbollah remains strong (though al Qaeda’s popularity has declined), and Islamists have made gains in several elections. President Bush was certainly right to argue that in the long-run, the only way to fully tackle this problem is for freedom, democracy, and prosperity to take hold in the region. But these political developments may take years or decades to achieve. In the meantime, to effectively promote economic, political, and democratic reform in the region, President Obama will have to evaluate the public diplomacy efforts of the Departments of Defense and State, and consider establishing a centralized office of public diplomacy to better coordinate efforts across all departments; make sure U.S. embassies are equipped to do effective public outreach; and reach out to Hollywood, U.S. universities, and other segments of the private sector.
- Engage more publicly in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It would be a mistake for President Obama to turn Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking into the central focus of his Middle East policy. However, the perception in the region that the U.S. devotes insufficient attention to the conflict, a perception which grew during the Bush administration, is damaging to U.S. interests. To counter this, President Obama's newly appointed envoy to the region, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, should be sure to work closely with regional actors as he develops a plan to set the peace process back on track.
Focusing on these strategic priorities will allow President Obama to make real, lasting progress in the Middle East over the next four years.
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Alexander Benard is an attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. He has worked at the Department of Defense and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Foreign Policy Digest.